Quote:
Originally Posted by fnord_too
Quite simply because the benefits outweigh the costs. Market forces do not push towards system maximization (re: Nash). Rather they push towards concentrating wealth and power in smaller smaller proportional pools.
But back to education: a more educated populace leads indirectly to a stronger economy and better conditions. Look at say all the breakthroughs made by Universities which have translated into business and better quality of life. There is no direct and obvious link from education profit, so there is no reason for business to fund it at a loss. Additionally, there are many people who otherwise could not afford to go to school. Furthermore, standardization and (relatively) unbiased education is pretty important imo. If I am a not for profit taking donations to run schools, my agenda is going to be influenced by the agenda of those who donate (if not they will just form their own agency). This leads to basically the have not's (and a child being a have not is not in the least merit based, but purely circumstantial) basically being at the mercy of the charity of others, who may have strong agendas.
Really, everyone benefits from an educated populace whether they realize it or not, so imo it does fall under the auspices of the government, because education of the masses does not coincide with maximizing shareholder wealth. (It's one of those damn Nash equilibriums where if you had a system where everyone (including business) contributed to a pot of money to educate the masses they would be better off than if no one did, but each individual decision is dominated by being selfish.)
Perhaps my recollection of Nash Equilibriums is incorrect, but I do not believe this is a Nash equilibrium problem.
If each of 300 million people contribute $10 to education, that's $3 billion for education. But if 299,999,999 people contribute $10 to eduction, that's $2,999,999,990 for education, and the one person who didn't contribute is still better off -- so there's no equilibrium there at all.
IIRC a Nash equilibrium problem would be where person A and person B are each deciding between X and Y, with the following utilities:
(choice of A, choice of B) = (utility to A, utility to B)
(X, X) = (25, 25)
(X, Y) = (20, 20)
(Y, X) = (20, 20)
(Y, Y) = (40, 40)
so if the current situation is (X,X), neither A nor B has immediate incentive to switch to Y, but once one does the other will too and they will both be better off.
In this education example, for it to be a Nash equilibrium problem as I understand it, you'd have to show that there is some threshold of education purchased where all of a sudden the benefits of education to all greatly increase.
If someone is more up on this stuff than me please feel free to correct me... was one of the few subjects in college that I actually found interesting.